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Welcome to our garden.

laurenltsimmonds

Updated: Sep 16, 2021

Gardens I find are very comforting spaces to be in. There's often something which looks pretty, something that smells nice and something which sounds busy. They're a hive of activity and if you think about it each garden is a mini nature reserve.

However there are a lot of people who don't have access to a garden during this lockdown, you might have a balcony or window box instead. Or maybe you don't even have that, there's always space inside for a few green plants and visiting a local park or nature reserve is a great excuse to get out your home (socially distancing of course). It's often underestimated how much of a positive impact greenery has on our mental wellbeing. Not long ago I lived in a ground floor studio flat in a very dull city which I won't name and shame, for about eight months. It nearly drove me insane, I finally had my own space but I hated it. My life changed after a trip to the garden centre where I bought a number of house plants and a fig tree. The flat suddenly looked a whole lot happier as did I and lockdown is the perfect opportunity for us to revisit what we have in our homes and outside spaces. I hope you find a bit of inspiration in the following rambles and have a think about how you can help your garden visitors.


Firstly let's introduce the garden we have at home in the Midlands. It's not massive but a decent size with a pond bang smack in the middle of the lawn, not an ideal place to have one but we inherited it. Once a worn out fish pond we did our best to re-landscape it one winter. It took so long we were still going as we entered spring, leaving us with four large containers of frogspawn in the conservatory housing 700ish tadpoles and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. It's a misconception that you need a big garden for a pond, absolutely not! An old sink sunk into the ground in a quiet corner of the garden will do, likewise an old washing up bowl works perfectly well. It doesn't need to be the size of a lake. If you're worried about your kids drowning don't make it very deep and put some pots and rocks around the outside so wildlife can still get through the gaps but your children remain safe and sound. And teach them a bit of water safety too!

Another wildlife friendly part of the garden are the hedges. Hedges, well where do I begin? They really are amazing habitats acting as a wildlife corridor enabling all kinds of animals and birds to forage for food and seek shelter. One of the traits of humans which I particularly dislike is our eagerness to make our lives easier no matter what the cost. Who suffers as a consequence? Nature. It doesn't make your neighbourhood hedgehog's life easier by laying gravel boards and putting up fences and to be fair to them they were here first (hedgehogs have been around for roughly 15 million years). Imagine if your local Sainsbury's put up a big metal fence and decided not to let you in one day because it suited them. I'd be pretty mift. I think the boat has already sailed on hedges as miles upon miles of them were replaced decades years ago. However you can always cut a hole in your fence with your neighbours permission. If everyone in your road did it you'd have yourself your very own hedgehog highway. The one new fad though which really scares me is artificial grass. It's a definite no no. If you want a barren desert for a garden which contributes to the plastic crisis choking the Earth and suffocates everything useful in the soil then...still don't get it. It's a no entry sign for wildlife and it disconnects every child who grows up in a garden with it just that little bit more. If you've seen The Lorax you'll know what I mean, if you haven't give it a watch - it might be a children's film but its messages are spot on.

The last bit of our garden which looks the most untidy is probably the best bit for wildlife. It's the deadwood and flower patch. This is a really simple design and easy to do, it's a pile of wood which we've let the grass grow long around. Think of it as a drive through, it houses all sorts of scrummy bugs for creatures like newts, frogs and hedgehogs to munch on. Scatter some wildflower seeds on it and it begins to be a haven for bees and butterflies. We've also planted a whole bunch of bee and butterfly friendly flowers. One out of every three or four bites of food we eat is thanks to bees, they pollinate over 90 different food crops so giving them a helping hand in our gardens should be a no brainer. It's important to plant or pot a big patch of these flowers because bees especially are more likely to return if they know there's enough of a food source to rely on. If you're planting your wildlife friendly plants in pots make sure they're grouped together and not dotted around.


Going back to the earlier comment about our gardens being mini nature reserves. There are an estimated 24 million gardens in the UK, that's potentially 24 million mini nature reserves. Imagine the impact of that! If everyone made at least one change to help nature in their garden whether that's a mini pond, a deadwood patch or plant a patch of bee and butterfly friendly flowers there would be 24 million new spaces for wildlife. And you might just get a bit of enjoyment out of it too which in the current global situation can't be a bad thing.


Happy digging!


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